Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Valiant Comics (1991-1995)

After graduating from the University of Florida I attended
two years at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art.

I couldn’t afford to come back for the third year so Jose
Delbo, one of my teachers at the school, set up an interview for me and fellow
student Maria Beccari at a small comic book company called Valiant that was
just starting to publish a line of books based on some old Gold Key characters.
Jim Shooter, who’d had a long stint as writer on DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes and later as Editor-in-Chief at Marvel, was Valiant’s
Editor-in-Chief. We were interviewed by Bob Layton (of Iron Man fame) and Don Perlin (former artist on The Defenders), who hired us on the
spot.

Maria and I were the first of what became known as Knob Row,
Valiant’s version of the Marvel bullpen. Under the guidance of the talented
Jade Moede (unquestionably Valiant’s heart and soul) and the other artists
employed there, including production guru Scott Friedlander, we learned how to
be professional cartoonists. Before long, as the number of books published by
Valiant increased, Knob Row was filled with other former Kubies—all of us
pouring our heart and souls into our work.

It was a life-altering experience. While there we trained in
a variety of skills—including penciling, inking, hand coloring, writing, and
editing. Having joined the team as it was just getting off the ground, I was
afforded the opportunity to familiarize myself with all different aspects of
running a successful comic book company.

Looking back now, it’s amazing what we
were able to achieve from such humble beginnings. It’s crazy to think
that at one point Valiant Comics beat out DC and Marvel to win Diamond Comics
Distributors’ Publisher of the Year award. This was certainly a highpoint in
the list of Valiant’s many accomplishments…before the company and the industry
itself began to unravel.

In the early days I did a lot of color work for Valiant.

It all began with WWF
Battlemania, starring the likes of Ultimate Warrior, Big Boss Man, Mountie,
and the Million Dollar Man. Yes, that’s right. The WWF. Wrestling. In addition
to the Nintendo license, early Valiant also had the license to do comic books
based on the WWF. We even got treated to a free night of Wrestlemania—my first
visit ever to Madison Square Garden.

WWF Battlemia
turned out to be a bit of a nightmare because of the hassle of having to get
approvals for all the likenesses. I remember us scrambling to color and cut and
paste (this was long before the existence of Photoshop) little wrestler heads that
had been redrawn by Bob before FedEx arrived to pick up pages going to the
printer to get color separated.

One of things that helped put Valiant on the map is that we
never missed a ship date—our books were always published on time. This often
resulted in lots of last minute craziness—I recall us literally splitting a Solar page into thirds so that three of
us could color the same page at the same time and get it finished before
FedEx’s arrival.

The cool thing about the WWF book is that we got to ink the
backgrounds and color artwork that had been drawn by Steve Ditko, co-creator of
Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. Later on we also got to work with Stan Drake,
creator of the long-running comic strip The
Heart of Juliet Jones. In an age filled with egomaniacal young wannabes who
can’t even make their deadlines, it was refreshing to meet two giants in the
industry who proved to be absolute gentlemen and consummate professionals.

My color work on the WWF book led to my coloring some pages
of Solar: Man of the Atom, followed
by X-O Manowar and the first couple
of issues of Shadowman, Harbinger #0, and scattered pages of
just about all our pre-Unity books.

There were many all-nighters spent at the office, made
bearable by the stable of other artists stuck in the same boat. Lots of laughs
(to accompany the blood, sweat, and tears) and late-night hijinks invariably
ensued. Lifelong friendships were forged. A special tip of the hat to fellow
partners in crime Mike Cavallaro and Maurice Fontenot.

All in all, it was an amazing experience. Through good times
and bad, I learned some invaluable life lessons.

Shadowman #13 was
the first story I ever wrote for Valiant. I was psyched when my pitch was
accepted.

The book featured a cool cover by Yvel Guichet and Randy
Elliot. Yvel also penciled the interior pages, elevating my freshman efforts.

“Conan in a can.”

I remember being at Valiant’s old office sitting in on open
meetings when Bob and Jim were first coming up with the X-O Manowar concept: Aric
Dacia, a Visigoth from the 5th Century A.D., transplanted to modern
times—wielder of a powerful sentient armor. It was all very exciting. I got a
taste of what it must have been like back in the early days of the Marvel
bullpen when they were coming up with new characters.

X-O Manowar, Harbinger, and Rai were the first series published by Valiant based on original
non-Gold Key characters. The launch of the Valiant Universe was underway.

Here are some samples of my color work from the first four
interior pages of X-O Manowar #1,
which became my first regular monthly assignment. Thankfully I was too young
and naive to be completely intimidated by the fact that I would be coloring the
artwork of renowned artist Barry Windsor-Smith. Barry, best known for his award-winning
run on Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian
back in the 1970’s, proved to be very generous with his knowledge. We were all
like sponges trying to soak up as much as we could from him.

I remained the colorist on the book for almost two years. I
had occasional help whenever the dreaded deadline doom made it impossible for
me to complete an issue by myself. Issue #4 was a fill-in, as were #s 16, 17,
and 18. I colored all the covers on the book up to issue #23 except for issues
#1, 5, 7, and 8.

Janet Jackson colored the covers for issues #7 and 8, which
were drawn by Frank Miller and Walt Simonson, respectively. In fact, she
colored all of Valiant’s covers those two months—covers that came together to
form two posters promoting the company-wide Unity event.

Issue #21 was the last issue I colored. By then I’d also assumed
the writing duties on the book, and the dual responsibilities became too much
to sustain. Once I was offered additional writing assignments I pretty much
stopped coloring altogether.

Issue #16 was the first X-O story I wrote. It remains a doubly
special issue for me since it was drawn by long-time Wonder Woman artist Jose Delbo. Jose, as I mentioned earlier, had
been one of my best teachers at the Kubert School and had also been responsible
for my working at Valiant.

With issue #17 I became the regular writer on the book. Writing
issues #18-23 was the most fun I had at Valiant, perhaps even the most fun in
my whole time in comics. Chalk it up to youthful enthusiasm—long before jaded
cynicism fueled by marketing directives and universe-wide “events” intruded on
the joy of telling good character-driven stories.

I remained the writer on X-O
Manowar till issue #43, ending my three-and-a-half year association the
book.

X-O Manowar #0,
powerfully drawn by artist Joe Quesada, gave us an opportunity to explore
Aric’s origins in greater detail—depicting the events that led up to issue #1.
I felt lucky to be a part of it. Bob co-plotted the story with me and provided
the script.

Of all the comic books I’ve written I think X-O Manowar Yearbook is the single issue
I’m most proud of. I haven’t read it in years, so it probably doesn’t hold up
as well as I remember, but I recall it with fondness.

Spinning directly out of events in X-O Manowar #25 came Armorines.
I wrote all twelve issues of the short-lived series except for issue #8.

I watched Jaws in
the theater when it first came out back in the summer of 1975. I was eight
years old at the time. It had a big impact on me, and remains one of my
all-time favorite films. When the deep sea became the setting for the Armorines’
opening storyline, I couldn’t resist pitting the boys against giant mutated
sharks.

Issue #2 sported a great cover by Jim Calafiore, who was the
regular artist on the book.

Issue 9 was one of the issues I enjoyed most since it
allowed us to focus more on the Armorines outside their armors. I loved the
fact that the four main characters were all minorities.

That issue had another great cover by Jim Calafiore,
beautifully colored by Eric Lusk.

Issues #10-12 provided a welcome opportunity to once again work
with my former teacher Jose Delbo.

The final issue of Armorines
was graced with one of my favorite covers for the series—an homage to the
classic cover from Uncanny X-Men
#138. Cover art by Tom Ryder.

Leading up to their monthly series the Armorines made a
guest appearance in issues #17 and 18 of The
H.A.R.D. Corps, which I got to write.

TurokDinosaur Hunter came out during the peak
of speculator frenzy. I colored the first two issues, including the covers. The
deadline was hell, with several back-to-back all-nighters required in order to
make the shipping date. But it was worth it. Issue #1 sold a million copies.
Valiant was the only company at the time that gave royalties to their
colorists. My royalty check for the first issue alone was more than I’d earned
the entire previous year. Crazy times. Total non-reality.

Not surprisingly, the speculator boom that had swept the
comic book industry in the mid 1990’s didn’t last long. When the bubble finally
burst, so did Valiant.

2 comments:

Thanks for dropping by, Yuhannes. It's great to hear from you. Valiant was a very special time in my life. And I feel fortunate to have been a part of it. We were blessed to have such loyal readers. Wishing you all the best.